Review:
The Cleveland Show: Episode Seventeen

117: Gone With The Wind

‘Have fun with your spin-off, Joey!’ – Glen Quagmire

Despite Cleveland getting his own spin-off show, the writers have yet to try and examine who he is. So far in the previous sixteen episodes, Cleveland has simply acted in any way suited for the plot that week, without any real thought as to his development or character. In fact, he’s become more and more like Peter Griffin every week. So this episode aims to tackle something that ol’ Griffin never could: lost love.

After Cleveland’s doctor says that his cholesterol is life-threatening, Donna puts him on a high-fibre diet. This has the unfortunate side-effect of giving Cleveland incredibly bad farts, which he uses for his own personal amusement. Unfortunately, he has no way of stopping them and the farts end up advancing Cleveland and Donna to the final of the Stool’s karaoke championships. Sadly, just when Cleveland believes that he’s on top of the world, he gets terrible news: his ex-wife Loretta has died.

It’s a really weird episode, this one. The first act, from Cleveland’s excessive bowel movements right through to the news of Loretta’s death, is incredibly funny and packs more silly humour into those ten minutes than the entire series has featured so far. The weirdness comes from the next two acts, as Cleveland tries to come to terms with his loss, and a great deal of the humour in the build-up is completely lost.

The main problem is that in trying to tackle a fairly serious subject (i.e., life and death), the writers have sold themselves short on the humour content in the episode, leaving it all up to a series of simple fart jokes. While the fart humour works really well for the first act, attempting to string it out into an entire episode – twenty whole minutes of bowel movements – is not a good idea. This actually holds the episode back from what could have been a brilliant example of humour and character, making the whole thing feel rather cheap and childish.